Community Develop Halton gave a first look at research done by a student group: impressive

By Pepper Parr

July 31^st, 2025

BURLINGTON, ON

We first learned about the bold decision to recruit young people to do survey work on what the 40 hours of volunteer community work meant to students and the impact that work was having on the community.

The definition of community was the Halton Region.

This was the assignment the students set out for themselves. They defined the task and then wrote the questionnaire – then went into the field and gathered data.

The students were to go out into the community and learn what other students thought of the requirement to put in 40 hours of volunteer work as a graduation requirement.

The students first had to design the questionnaire and then decide how they would gather data.

Where was the data gathered? Postal codes were used to locate. Some of the students had concerns about personal privacy with the use of postal codes.. The data on the right has two elements: how the students surveyed rated their volunteer experience and how they balanced personal life and volunteering. It will be interesting to read their analysis when the project is completed next February.

It was a one year project, funded by the Burlington Foundation. The report given last evening was part one – a sort of check in occasion to report on where they were.  The project ends in February of 2026.

To date there are 225 surveys completed

We saw the first view of that work on Wednesday evening when the students gave a short report on what they had learned and how they gathered their data.

From left to right: Youth Engagement Research Team Members Dharmi Kambodi, Tumi Segun-Ajala, and Krisha Thakkar.

Iman Kaur, Community Planner and Youth Engagement Coordinator, Community Development Halton.  Iman is the staff lead for the Youth Engagement Research Team.  She is pursuing a Masters of Public Policy at McMaster University, with a focus on Housing Policy.

One group used social media while another group went to skate parks and asked questions.  What was impressive was the quality of the work done and how confident the students were.  There was no stumbling over what they were saying and no difficulty with follow-up questions.

This, at the halfway point, suggests there is going to be a solid report that will get passed on to the provincial government.

Community Development Halton (CDH)  is a much different organization under the direction of Executive Director Rishia Burke, who is very quick to tell you about the impressive and supportive Board of Directors she has in place.

The organization serves to prime purposes: they operate a volunteer portal: a place where people can learn who is looking for volunteers and a place where people can register as volunteers.

The second focus is community planning.

Heather Johnson: Director: Volunteer Halton

Rishia Burke: Executive Director

We will follow up on how these two initiatives work together to serve the people in the Region. CDH is seen as one of the more productive not-for-profit community organizations in the province.  It is an unrecognized gem that has done solid work during the last decade and has been around for more than 40 years.  You’d be lucky to find five people out of every thousand in Burlington that would know what CDH stood for.